The present invention relates generally to assembling semiconductor devices, and more particularly to a method of assembling a pressure sensor device.
Semiconductor sensor devices such as pressure sensor devices are well known. Pressure sensor dies are susceptible to mechanical damage during handling and packaging. For this reason, these sensor dies are typically mounted in pre-molded packages and then sealed in the packages using a separate cover/lid.
One way of packaging the semiconductor sensor dies is to mount the dies to a pre-molded lead frame and encapsulate the die and pre-molded lead frame with a mold compound. For example, current cavity QFN (Quad Flat No lead) packages require the lead frame to be pre-molded to create a cavity for a gel coating that covers the sensor. However, the premold process is not robust, often low yielding and may result in mold related defects. Moreover, premolded lead frames are relatively expensive, which makes the overall packaging costs unattractive.
Packages with pre-molded lead frames have other associated issues such as gel bleed between the mold and leads, mold flashing and voids, cavity height inconsistency and G-Cell and P-Cell parametric shifts during rapid decompression events (RDE).
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to be able to efficiently package the pressure sensor dies with the risk of environmental damage to the die being substantially reduced or eliminated while reducing the overall packaging costs.